The best parts of The Gifts of Imperfection, by Brené Brown:

“Compassion is not a relationship between the healer and the wounded. It’s a relationship between equals. Only when we know our own darkness well can we be present with the darkness of others.” – Pema Chödrön

One of the greatest (and least discussed) barriers to compassion practice is the fear of setting boundaries and holding people accountable… This research has taught me that if we really want to practice compassion, we have to start by setting boundaries and holding people accountable for their behavior.

If we don’t follow through with appropriate consequences, people learn to dismiss our requests — even if they sound like threats or ultimatums.

The key is to separate people from their behaviors — to address what they’re doing, not who they are… That’s where we get into trouble. When we talk ourselves into disliking someone so we’re more comfortable holding them accountable, we’re priming ourselves for the shame and blame game.

When we attach judgment to receiving help, we knowingly or unknowingly attach judgment to giving help.

If we want to fully experience love and belonging, we must believe we are worthy of love and belonging.

Belonging is the innate human desire to be part of something larger than us. Because this yearning is so primal, we often try to acquire it by fitting in and by seeking approval, which are not only hollow substitutes for belonging, but often barriers to it.

Guilt = I did something bad.
Shame = I am bad.

Life paralysis refers to all of the opportunities we miss because we’re too afraid to put anything out in the world that could be imperfect.

Perfectionism is addictive because when we invariably do experience shame, judgment, and blame, we often believe it’s because we weren’t perfect enough.

Martin Luther King Jr. described power as the ability to affect change.

The Greek word for joy is chairo… “the good mood of the soul.”

The more entrenched and reactive we are about an issue, the more we need to investigate our responses.

Do works about equality and social justice make you so sad and pissed off? It’s so hard to power through, and it’s all I can think about for weeks after. Still, this was worth reading. It’s always nice to have facts confirm your suspicions about weird elements of your life.

The best parts of Men Explain Things to Me by Rebecca Solnit:

“Women’s liberation has often been portrayed as a movement intent on encroaching upon or taking power and privilege away from men, as though in some dismal zero-sum game, only one gender at a time could be free and powerful.”

“Credibility is a basic survival tool.”

“A woman is beaten every nine seconds in the country. Just to be clear: not nine minutes, but nine seconds. It’s the number one cause of injury to American women…”

“In 1990, the Journal of the American Medical Association reported, ‘studies of the Surgeon General’s office reveal that domestic violence is the leading cause of injury to women between the ages of fifteen and forty-four, more common than automobile accidents, muggings, and cancer deaths combined.'”

“the confrontational confidence of the totally ignorant”

“Clearly the ready availability of guns is a huge problem in the United States, but despite this availability to everyone, murder is still a crime committed by men 90 percent of the time.”

“billions of women… being told that they are not reliable witnesses to their own lives”

VOCAB

Carbuncle a severe abscess or multiple boils in the skin, typically infected with staphylococcus bacteria.

Eve-teasing a euphemism used throughout South Asia for public sexual harassment or molestation (often known as “street harassment”) of women by men, where Eve alludes to the very first woman, according to the Biblical creation story.

antediluvian of or belonging to the time before the biblical Flood, or an idea that is ridiculously old fashioned.

Any other feminist works you’d recommend? I want an updated Backlash.

I’m conflicted about this book, have you read it? Because let’s discuss.

The Clasp is the first book I’ve read by Sloane Crosley, and she has such a talent for observation and detail that I’m now going to read everything else she’s written. And I can’t wait.

That said, the momentum and my character investment waned so abruptly that I didn’t even bother to finish the last seventy-two pages. I was 300 pages in when all the air went out of my tires, so I just skimmed to the end. Wehhhhhhh.

Have you ever had sex with someone you’ve built up in your mind, and it’s electric at first, but then he does his thing and rolls over to sleep? This book was like that.

Still, that electric part though. My favorite parts of The Clasp:

“The groomsmen’s jackets had come off. The women had grown shorter over the course of the evening.”

“Inside, Meredith’s husband, Michael, was wearing mint-green drawstring pants and opening a bag of frozen shrimp with a corkscrew.”

“She hated Los Angeles as a concept, but she also hated it on a personal level… Kezia had been told, by people trying to befriend her, that she should inject stroke medication into her forehead, how many calories were in her meal, which stylist had dropped a bracelt down the toilet, how to minimize undereye bags, all leading a few drinks later, to stories of molesting uncles and first loves who had perished in car accidents. ‘Anyway, should we split the burrata?'”

“He had reflexively touched her when she offered to show him her pirouette, last performed when she was seven years old and executed with all the grace of a human that age. He caught her in his arms before she fell headlong into a bamboo chair. She did not scramble to remove her weight but stayed limp, as if he had dipped her. Women had used this tactic with him before. Generally it took the form of drunken cartwheels in his living room or hand slapping games he did not want to learn. He know what they were doing. They were aiming for charm but missing the mark; their actions seemed to say, ‘I have the carefree joy of a prepubescent girl. So please fuck me.'”

So you see what I mean about talent. There was more. You should really read the first half of this book, guys.

VOCAB

Raynaud’s phenomenon is excessively reduced blood flow in response to cold or emotional stress, causing discoloration of the fingers, toes, and occasionally other areas.

U-bet chocolate syrup

An alcove studio is the same as a studio apartment with an additional space off the living room.

slitchiness This was a weird one, I think she means the sound of voluminous women’s clothing in motion, but the only ref I could find for slitchy was as a slang term meaning bitchy or slutty.

solopsism (a word I should know by now) the view or theory that the self is all that can be known to exist

Okay! Have you read it or any of Crosley’s other stuff? Tell me your things.

P.S. If you’re on Goodreads, I am also on Goodreads. Nerd party!

Evany is one of my favorite people, and she’s posting something new to read every day this month. There will be some good reading in there, and my favorite so far is her advice letter to her son Desi:

“5. Don’t rape people. This one may seem obvious, but it’s become increasingly apparent that for some reason, it totally isn’t. But the directions are pretty easy to follow on this one: No matter what someone’s wearing or not wearing, even if you’re both naked, even if you’ve already started, it’s still never too late to stop. If the other person says “no” or “stop” or “uh-uh,” then you just…stop. That’s all.”